A Different Fate
by Silvyia
Summary: We've all heard the story before, of four young girls who meet by chance and watch their world crumble before their eyes; they go on a journey to save the world. But I'm tired of that narrative. What if... they had never met at all? What if one little change caused everything to go down a vastly different path? What if the world you know and love never came into existence at all?
1. Chapter 1

Wherein Snow White kills the poisoned apple and frees herself. She is on her way to find the Queen.

* * *

Weiss Schnee is a fourteen year-old girl who lives under the ever watching eyes of her father. Her mother is absent; drinking, probably, somewhere out of sight. Her elder sister was gone – left home long ago, left Weiss to fend for herself in a family of cruelty, all alone, long ago. Her younger brother was just a photo-copy of their father. She hated him; her father and her brother. She often struggled with whether she hated her mother and sister or not. Her sister abandoned her, left her here to deal with these people by herself, but she was the only one to show her genuine kindness among all of the hatred and cold hands. Her mother had never directly hurt her, but her absence was... a different kind of painful.

She survives here, in this family, in this big, empty, cold home; but she does not truly live.

Weiss Schnee is fourteen years old when she tries to leave home. Fourteen years old when her father "tests" her strength with an Arma Gigas. Fourteen years old when she's thrown across the hall and her face splits and she gains a new scar across her left eye – her vision is permanently impaired in that eye now.

Weiss Schnee is fourteen years old when she wins the fight against the Arma Gigas.

"Congratulations," her father had said sarcastically with a wave of his hand. "You've won. Are you happy now? You get to leave your family behind and go to Beacon. Is this what you wanted? To run off without a farewell, like your sister?"

_Yes. Yes and no._

She knows he's manipulating her. She looks down at her feet, pale and thin like a dancer, she looks at her hands that are clasped elegantly in front of herself. They are covered in yellowish bruises that are fading, a few band-aids that cover the scratches from all her years of training. She looks at the harm her body has endured all these years at the hands of her father – the hands of this beast.

_I want to leave, yes._

She looks up at her father, his back is turned, he's reaching for some books on the bookshelf behind his big desk. He reaches, skims over the book cover, then retracts his hand like he changed his mind. Another manipulation tactic, she knows. Pretending he has better things to do than to talk to his own daughter. She sees the letter-opener on his desk, a freshly opened document from the general. Her eyes trace the sharp edge of the blade. She looks at the blade, looks at her father's turned back.

_I don't want to leave without a farewell._

She is graceful. She is fluid. She is quick and she is smooth, she moves without a sound, like she was always taught to. She moves before he turns around, before he sees her, before he hears her beating heart. It's beating so hard, she thinks, that it might beat right out of her chest. She grabs the letter-opener. She leaps over his desk.

_Farewell_, she thinks.

It's just like killing a Grimm, she thinks. Just like killing a beast – mindless and cruel and only ever wanting, needing, with greedy eyes and a monstrous, clawed hand. Just the same.

"Farewell," she mutters aloud when the deed is done. When her father is down on the ground, gasping up at her, looking at her with eyes just like a Grimm – so wide and proud, so confused about how this little girl could beat them, how how how? How did she win? I was so confident – so sure I would win - so sure I was stronger -

Weiss feels the same rush she's ever felt with Grimm hunting, the same joy.

She's removed one more monster from this world.

As she was taught to.

Weiss Schnee is fourteen years old when she defeats an Arma Gigas. Weiss Schnee is fourteen years old when she loses most vision in her left eye. Weiss Schnee is fourteen years old when her father finally allows her to leave home, to travel abroad. Weiss Schnee is fourteen years old when she realizes her father is a Grimm in human clothing.

Weiss Schnee is fourteen years old when she kills her own father and runs away from home.


	2. Chapter 2

Wherein the Beast stays with the bigger, more fearsome predator. Her rose withers.

* * *

Blake Belladonna is fifteen years old when she and Adam Taurus board a Schnee family Dust Train; carrying a huge amount of powerful crystals, cut and uncut alike, dusted and polished. Her eyes go wide at the sight, tracing the colorful lines across the beautiful elements. She reaches a pale hand out and touches one with the tips of her fingers; it is smooth and cool to the touch, and she frowns. So much power held within such a small rock, all belonging to one company. One greedy, cruel, selfish company.

"Blake, let's go," Adam urges her from the other end of the train compartment.

Her gold-dusted eyes look to him. They spot the charge in his hands – _red, red hands, so much blood on them_ – and she knows that he has finished planting the bombs. She finds herself asking him, "what about the passengers?"

He pauses in his movements, then picks up a red crystal. _Red, red, red._

"What about them?" He asks in a tone that answered the question. She looks away in shame, thoughts wandering.

Her thoughts wander throughout the entire fight that follows; her body is honed and entirely focused on defending her partner, following his commands, doing as she's told – a tool to be used and sharpened. Her mind never once stops thinking about what if. What if she left? What if she followed through with her plans to run away, here and now?

What if she could survive on her own?

The fight ends and she doesn't even think about it. Adam saved her, as he always does. He's saved her life so many times.

They are at the end of the train, and she looks at the last compartment longingly; she looks at the metal rods holding the two compartments together, she sees how easy it would be to break it. Break the metal holding the train together, break the connection he had on her soul. Break the chains on her heart.

He looks at her, holding that charge in his red, red hands.

She thinks about how, if she stayed with him now, she would have just as much red on her hands as he did. She would have all of the lives of these people on her hands. Blood for power.

He holds out a hand to her, an expecting look on his face.

She thinks of his red hands and how she wants nothing to do with them – then she thinks of the news she had watched just a few months ago. News that Adam had showed her as proof that all humans were inherently bad. News about the Schnee Dust Company itself. She thinks of how the little girl dressed in all white and as agile and beautiful as a dancer, so graceful and fluid like an angel, had killed her own father and run away from home. Blake thinks of how it's been months, but nobody has heard of that girl since the night she left. Blake questions herself, questions how in a world like this – in a world where little girls murder their fathers and leave home without a word, where a murdered father's child-son could take over the company at such a young age and implement much worse, much more violent rules for her kind – well, in a world like this... How could she possible think she could survive on her own?

She reaches over and grabs his hand. The red leaks off of his and onto hers. Slowly, slowly, but surely.

She knows in her heart she is stained.


	3. Chapter 3

Wherein Little Red never goes to Grandma's place at all. She simply never encounters the Big Bad Wolf.

* * *

Ruby Rose is fifteen years old when she sees her favorite shop broken into one morning.

It'd always been her favorite little spot there - not only did she enjoy the catalogs and newspapers that were swapped out daily for customers to look at, but the old man who manned the story was always kind to her and she found herself thinking of him as a friend. It was mainly a simple dust shop and thus she had no use for the actual buying-and-selling portion of the place, but the old man never seemed to mind her going there after school or after a long day of training to simply browse what he had available for reading.

One morning, however, she found that Signal Academy had closed for the day as a Teacher's Appreciation day or something. She hadn't really been paying that much attention to why, simply excited at having the day off and already thinking of how to convince her uncle Qrow to spend the whole day training with their scythes by breakfast.

Her older sister Yang had patted her on the head a few times and laughed at her antics, but her father crushed her hopes by telling her that Qrow had important business to be attending to elsewhere.

_"Super secret missions," _he'd said in a hushed whisper and an exaggerated wink that made Ruby grin.

Crushed by this revelation but still wanting to have a nice day with the time she had, she went about Vale at a steady, relaxed pace, simply getting to know the place better. Today was Yang's last day before heading to Beacon Academy - a feat that had garnered shouts of excitement and enough bone-crushing hugs to last a lifetime when she'd told Ruby and their father about it. Even now, Ruby smiled at the memory. Her sister was going to be a wonderful Huntress, she was sure!

Looking out across Vale, a slim but strong arm patting the cool metal of Crescent Rose attached to the back of her belt, she looked firm and resolute.

_So will I. _

Night falls quickly upon the Kingdom, and Ruby mopes about a few local shops as the last rays of daylight disappear. It seemed that time went by so much quicker on days off than when attending school, she mused miserably.

She spots the lights of a certain shop open for business and she smiles. She begins walking toward the small dust shop, and she can already see the old man inside smiling at her with closed eyes and a wrinkly hand waving hello.

Her scroll rings with an incoming call. She pauses, nearly jumping out of her skin at the sudden sound in the mostly quiet night, before realizing what it was. She grumbles out a jumble of words as she hurriedly answers it.

"Hello-" She begins before being immediately cut off.

"Ruby, sweetheart, thank God you're okay," her father, Taiyang, says in a hurried tone and a sigh of relief.

"Dad? Are you alright? What's wrong?"

"You need to come home, Ruby. There's something going on, a White Fang attack on the city, it's not safe out there right now. Promise me you'll come home - I know you're tough, but.."

Ruby frowns. What could be going on that has her father worrying about her like this?

"Dad, I can handle myself-"

He interrupts her again. "_ Promise me, Ruby. _Come home." There's a hint of desperation in his voice, and she finds her heart beating just a bit faster. It must be something serious to have him worked up so much, and her immediate need to assert herself as a strong young lady and tell him she'll be fine on her own is squashed with doubt. She finally sighs and concedes.

"Alright. I'm coming home. Explain what's going on, though!" She turns around, still speaking with her father on the phone. She finds herself immediately face-planting into another person, and she drops her scroll in the process.

"Oh, I'm sorry! Oh gosh, I'm-" she begins in a rush. She finds herself interrupted for the third time in one night, and she's quickly getting annoyed by it.

"Watch where you're goin', little red," a smooth but gruff voice barks out at her. She looks up from picking up her scroll to see a man with orange hair swept over one eye, a bowler hat atop his head, and a cigar hanging from his lips. She frowns, but he simply uses his cane to move her aside and continues walking forward. She shakes her head and begins walking home, but a deep doubt in her heart stops her where she stands.

She turns around and glances at the man in the bowler hat again. She feels… wrong. She watches him walk towards the little dust shop with a small posse of men in black and red outfits following him, and she can't help but feel something is wrong.

But her father's words ring in her head again, and she turns and heads home.

She was sure it'd be fine.


End file.
